Activist and Pastor of the Latter Rain Assembly, Tunde Bakare, has disclosed that it was the free education program of the late premier of the Western region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, that made him into what he is today as his parents were unable to train him in school.
“If not for Awolowo’s free education, I won’t be here tonight. I am standing on the legacy of Awolowo. This legacy is not for sale,” Bakare said while delivering the sermon on Tuesday night at the thanksgiving service held for the late wife of the late sage, Chief Hannah Idowu Dideolu, at her Ikenne country home.
Bakare said he had been withdrawn from school due to lack of fund and was already an apprentice at a carpentry shop. “Then when Chief Obafemi Awolowo introduced the free education programme in the Western Region, a teacher who taught me in the primary school, and appreciated my brilliance came looking for me and took me back to school,” he said.
Bakare said Awolowo’s legacy is not for sale and cannot be bought as it stemmed out of the sage’s selflessness and sacrifice to make life more abundant for his people.
He praised Mama Awolowo as one from whose mouth he never heard any bad or hate word against anyone else in all his interactions with her.
Quoting from Malachi 3:16-18, he urged family members and others at the service, to fear God and avoid idle words, “because God will judge every idle word.”
He described the late HID Awolowo as a jewel of God, whose life was spared from deterioration, adding that she had fought a good fight and finished her course.
Bakare urged the family members left behind by Mama and Papa Awolowo to keep their parents’ legacy alive.
The service was attended by the wife of the vice- president who is a grandchild of HID Awolowo, Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo; wife of the Ogun State Governor, Mrs. Olufunso Amosun, Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, and Chief Olanihun Ajayi .
